Saturday, May 4, 2013

Raised Plaster Stencil

I finally accomplished two projects this week and this is one of them. I have wanted to try to do a raised stencil for a very long time, and I thought it was a lot harder than it was. I ordered the stencil from Victoria Larsen and I could not be happier with the results. In fact, I am working on a second one in all white which I hope to share with you in a couple of days.

I painted a large cabinet door with Annie Sloan's duck egg blue and added some Modern Masters crackle medium. I wanted the door to have an aged and distressed look.

When all of that had dried I laid the stencil down and clamped it at the end to keep the stencil from moving. You could use tape as well too. Then I took some premixed joint compound, the kind that is used for drywall. I smoothed it over the stencil with a putty knife and kind of smoothed it out to make sure it was totally in the whole pattern. Then while that was still wet I added more joint compound to make my image more textured and thicker.

Once that step was done, I lifted the stencil away from the pattern I had just created. Then I walked away. This was the hardest part. I kept checking it to see if it was drying. The directions said to allow it to dry overnight. Sure enough the next morning it was hard as a rock. By the way, in between each side and after I was finished with the plastering process I just rinsed the stencil in our utility sink. It's very thick and it just washed right off.

At this point I took some light sandpaper and gently sanded the pattern just to lift off anything that would chip away. When the sanding was done, I painted over the pattern with the duck egg blue so the panel was now all one color. You need to paint over the plaster material to seal it.

Once the paint dried, I laid the stencil back over the pattern and painted the pattern with some light ivory acrylic paint. The final step was waxing the whole panel, first with clear wax and then blending in some dark wax. The plaster dried to a very hard finish. I really applied pressure with the wax and nothing broke away or came loose. I can't wait to see how the white on white turns out. I'll share the results when it's completed.Before I end this post, I wanted to let you know I have added an email button on my left side bar and since then I have been contacted twice to let me know some of you are unable to pin my projects. I have someone working on the problem and it should be fixed very soon. You're welcome to pin anything you find on my blog. I'm all about sharing. Thanks for visiting.

Gorgeous! I have seen similar techniques but not as many steps in terms of painting. Obviously that's what makes your piece shabby chic! Thanks so much for sharing so generously, that's so hard to come by these days :)

The Shoppe

About Me

Hi, my name is Maggie. I have worked in the legal field for 27 years, but my real passion is finding treasures and restoring or repurposing them. I love everything French. I have been a dealer in different antique malls for the past 12 years and for the past six years have been a dealer at Aubergine Emporium in Simi Valley, California. I am also a vendor at The Little French Flea Market in Tarzana, California. I absolutely love the hunt.